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" In Libya, I did well at school because I was clever. In Egyptian public school, I got the highest marks for the basest of reasons. And in the American school, I struggled. Everything - mathematics, the sciences, pottery, swimming - had to be conducted in a language I hardly knew and that was neither spoken in the streets nor at home. "

Hisham Matar

School

Got

Home

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" For an overwhelming majority of my life, my country has been a source of pain, fear, and embarrassment. "

" The romantic idea of the penniless writer is false. It's terrible. I hated being in debt. I hated the anxiety of not knowing whether we could pay our rent that month. Thankfully, I had a wife who was very supportive and had faith and shared my madness. "

" I think, ultimately, I am a sensualist and an aesthete. "

Hisham Matar

Ultimately

I Am

" In the same way that Egypt and Libya conspired to 'disappear' my father and silence writers such as Idris Ali, they made me, too, to a far lesser extent, feel punished for speaking out. "

" I ultimately write for myself and the people I love. "

" Nothing we read can import new or foreign feelings that we don't, in one form or another, already possess. "

" I sometimes wonder if I would have become a writer if what happened to my father hadn't happened. "

" I am longing to see Libya rejoin the world as the internationalist Mediterranean country that it was. "

" We need a father to rage against. "

" My father believed in armed struggle. "

" Whenever I was encouraged by my elders to pick up a book, I was often told, 'Read so as to know the world.' And it is true; books have invited me into different countries, states of mind, social conditions and historical epochs; they have offered me a place at the most unusual gatherings. "

Hisham Matar

Book

Mind

" My earliest memory of books is not of reading but of being read to. I spent hours listening, watching the face of the person reading aloud to me. "

Hisham Matar

Face

Listening

" I don't believe people are interested in dates and facts. I don't think it is interesting to say what it is to be this person or that, but I do believe it is entertaining and perhaps even of value to express how it is to be that person. "

" Libyans are deeply unsettled by Gaddafi and his regime's careless contempt for human life. The dictatorship is willing to employ any methods necessary to remain in power. "

" There are two voices: the first says write; the second hardly speaks, but I know what he wants. And if I let him, nothing would get done. He hovers at the edges. "

" Books have shown me horror and beauty. "

Hisham Matar

Books

Shown

" One of the reasons why Gadafy's dictatorship has managed to remain in power for so long is not just because it has shown itself to be able to exact a great deal of violence, both psychological and physical, on its people, but because it has been very successful at imposing a narrative, a story. "

" As part of the ritual of becoming a man, my maternal uncle, a judge, and his four sons, each older than me, took me deer hunting. "

Hisham Matar

Man

Deer

" Like most dictators, Col Gaddafi detests the metropolis. His vision of Libya is a kind of Bedouin romantic medievalism, suspicious of universities, theatres, galleries and cafes, and so monitors the cities' inhabitants with paranoid suspicion. "

" My parents were fairly laid-back, but there were certain things about which they were very strict. My brother and I were told never to turn away a person in need. And it didn't matter what we thought of their motives, whether they were truly in need or not. "

" My work is my shelter, particularly in these moments when things are happening fast. "

" Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides. "

" I've never thought of myself in terms of an identity. I'm always baffled when I encounter someone who gives the impression about being confident about a particular defined identity. "

" It is easy to underestimate the demands of an open heart. "

" When I'm writing, my mood is very good - and I love life. "

" I lost my father when I was 19, so the majority of my life has been under this cloud, and I have been full of the intention to find out what happened. "

" I think my generation's inability to speak in absolute terms when it comes to politics is a very positive thing; it's made us more nuanced, made us more complex. "

Hisham Matar

Think

Speak

" My father, the political dissident Jaballa Matar, disappeared from his home in Cairo in March 1990. "

" One of the frustrations of prison life, which is also one of its intended consequences, is that the prisoner is made ineffective. He is unable to be of much use. The aim is to render him powerless. "

Hisham Matar

Prison

Consequences

" From my family alone, Qaddafi had imprisoned five men. "